En plus de ses activités cinématographiques, Jean Renoir fut un authentique polygraphe, ayant écrit plusieursromans et pièces de théâtre, de nombreux articles et des textes autobiographiques. A cet ensemble vients’ajouter sa correspondance, qui se développe lors de l’exil de Renoir aux Etats-Unis, durant la deuxième guerremondiale. Cette correspondance est volontiers utilisée comme une source documentaire qui permet d’éclairer labiographie et la carrière du cinéaste, mais elle a été peu considérée pour elle-même. Il est nécessaired’envisager la lettre, non seulement comme document, mais comme discours et comme texte. Si la lettre deRenoir délivre des informations qui renseignent la création de certains films, la rhétorique qui est à l’oeuvrepeut nuancer l’histoire de la genèse cinématographique.L’enjeu de cette correspondance se révèle moins génétique qu’autobiographique. Renoir utilise la lettre pourrendre compte des bouleversements identitaires nés de la situation d’exil et afin de manifester son identitéartistique. Il brise ainsi lui-même la légende de l’Auteur forgée dans les années cinquante et à laquelle il avaitlui-même publiquement contribué. Sur la scène épistolaire, Renoir se voit en honnête homme au sens oùl’époque classique l’entendait : il utilise la lettre comme un moyen de faire preuve de sociabilité par la maîtrised’un art de plaire. Le souci de l’agrément le pousse à expérimenter des postures permettant d’obtenirl’assentiment du correspondant. Avant d’utiliser la lettre comme réservoir biographique, le lecteur devraremettre en perspective cette rhétorique de l’honnête homme selon Renoir. / In addition to his cinematographic activities, Jean Renoir was a very prolific and versatile writer, havingauthored several novels and plays, as well as many articles and autobiographical texts. To this collection ofwritings one can add his correspondence, which developed during Renoir's exile in the United States duringWorld War II. This correspondence is readily used as a documentary resource that helps to shed light on the lifeand career of the filmmaker, but seldom has it been considered in its own right. It is essential to consider a letternot only as a document but as a discourse, a text. If on the one hand Renoir's letters reveal information aboutthe making of certain films, the rhetoric at work could help reinterpret the history of cinematographic genesis.What is at stake in this correspondence turns out to be less genetic than autobiographical. Renoir uses letters torelate the identity upheaval born out of a situation of exile and to demonstrate his artistic identity. In doing sohe shatters the myth of the Author, created in the fifties and to which he had himself publicly contributed. Onan epistolary level, Renoir sees himself as an honest man, in the way it was understood in the classical period.He uses letters as a way to prove his sociability through the mastery of the art of pleasing. His desire to pleaseincites him to experiment with stances likely to generate his correspondent's assent. Before using letters as abiographical resource, the reader must put back into perspective this rhetoric of the honest man according toRenoir.

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The aim of this thesis is simple, yet complex: to provide a systematic analysis of Balzac's references to the visual arts, not only in the Comédie Humanine but in the apprentice novels and miscellaneous writings. In the words of this year's Année Balzacienne, it sets out to be a "bilan d'influences et d'allusions picturales", and as such is the first recent project in this field. It is a simple project in that it largely confines itself to the presence, in Balzac's work, of identifiable visual refences. It is complex in that there are many thousands of such refences, sometimes moulding and inspiring the creation of character or setting, sometimes merely serving as objects in the novels (a painting, a porcelain vase or a buhl sideboard), sometimes - but less often present in a didactic manner; moreover, the Comédie Humaine itself is in a state of constant evolution, as when (for instance) a Joseph Bridau is substituted for a Delacroix, or a Watteau fan for a pearwood crucifix carved by Giradon; and to add still further to the complexity, the territory of this exploration includes not only the visual indebtedness but equally Balzac's personal involvement with painting, sculpture, architecture, furnishing and engraving - together with a brief analysis of his fictional artists. Much has been written already about the theoretical aspects of Balzac's concern with painting, sculpture and engraving. This detailed account of the visual sources will, it is hoped, assist later theoretical discussions. Yet such is the range of the novelist's interest that even this account must be selective. In the chronological outline of Balzac's interest in the visual arts, it is stressed that even as a youth he had ample opportunity to study many of what were then considered the finest masterpieces in European painting. Until 1816 pictures confiscated from Italy, Spain and the Netherlands were held at the Louvre — in addition to that gallery's "indigenous" collection. There were also his visits to foreign collections: Vienna, Munich, Venice, Florence, Milan, St Petersburg, Berlin, Dresden, The Hague, Amsterdam, Rome. Almost equally important were his actual contacts with painters such as Delacroix and Boulanger, the failed painter Gautier, and the sculptor Théophile Bra. Despite Bazlac's indebtedness to Girodet's "Endymion", Delacroix's colourful treatment of the Faust theme, and his special debts to Sigalon and Delorme, much the greater debt to contemporary French art is to caricature, which influenced him in the choice of certain types of subject-matter. Many of his early serial publications - L'Usurier for example — are transpositions into words of visual image popularised by Gavarni and Monnier. The same interest in caricature accounts for the part played in the Comédie Humaine only in the novels - by dandies, lorettes, grisettes and the stock figure of the crass bourgeois. In traditional French painting Balzac appreciated the Rococo style at a time when it had only recently begun to be fashionable again. Amongst Dutch, Flemish and German painters, he disparaged Rubens for his "montagnes de viandes flamandes, saupoudrées de vermillon"; he almost equated Rembrandt with the genre painters in his admiration for "les vieillards que le pinceau de Van Ostade, de Rembrandt, de Miéris, de Gérard Dow a tant caressés"; from Flemish painting he derived both Porbus and a mythical artist, Frenhofer, to whom yet another Flemish artist, Mabuse, supposedly transmitted the ultimate secrtes of his art. In Italian painting Raphael was the outstanding personality, both to Balzac and most of his contemporaries; in the Comédie Humaine he is usually associated with angelie and etherial virtue; its radiantly pure virgins are modelled upon Raphael's Madonnas, but so too are some of its loveliest courtesans. Balzac almost certainly saw the "Apollo Belvedere", the "Antinott", the "Venus de' Medici" and other masterpieces of Classical sculpture during their confiscation in France; such statues inspire many fictional portraits. The portrait of Camille Maupin reflects a topical interest in Egyptology. Of the sculptors of his own time Balzac found Canova and Thorwaldsen the most congenial, neo-Classicism being more suited to sculpture than to painting. In architecture he undoubtedly failed to respond to much that is great and imaginative. Like Stendahl, he was indifferent to the Baroque style, even the Baroque architecture of Paris. What most elated him in erchitecturw was the vastness of such buildings as Bourges Cathedral. In Balzac's treatment of furnishings and settings, modern furniture is made into a symbol of parvanu vulgarity. Furnishings and settings of many historical epochs are presented in the novels, from the early fourteenth century to the First Empire. Of all these Balzac infinitely preferred the Louis XV style: again, he was a forerunner in the revival of interest in the eighteenth century. Engravings are not an aspect of the visual arts in which Balzac appreciated the best. The only great engravers to have exerted any marked influence upon the Comédie Humnaine are Callot and Delacroix: Callot in his inspiration of La Frélore, and Delcroix in that he helped to popularise the Faust theme. Painters, sculptors, writers — even natural scientists — are all artists, In Balzac's definition of the term; and the primary loyalty of all is to their own art. Balzac does not share the Romantic notion of the artist's role as Philosopher King. As in the cases of Claës and Poussin, art can give rise to heartrending conflicts of loyalty, but all true artists resolve such conflicts to the advantage of their art. Other qalities of the true artist are spontaneity and ingenousness, qualities that would debar him from the political mission of a Lamartine or Hugo. Sarrasine, La maison du Chat-qui- Pelote and Le Chef-d'oeuvre all emphasize that the artist's dedication and naiveté lead to a discordance with reality - an idea essentially derived from Hoffmann. In the main, Balzac's artists fail to achive worldly success. Grassou, who does achieve it, is a second-rate ddauber. But he pleases the wealthy middle class, whereas Joseph Bridau, the true artist, disgruntles them. Joseph is totally worsted in his conflict with Flore Brazier and Max Gilet; though eventually he becomes wealthy, it is only through an irony of fate. Artistic success in the Comédie Humaine isn dearly and bitterly won, but money is a stimulus to creative effort — as is an understanding woman. As Steinbeck's career reveals, the greatest danger threatening any artist is failure through sheer lack of application. But hardly less serious a danger is to theorize, rather than experiment brush in hand. Indeed, an artist's indolence often arises from the much greater difficulty of executing works of art than conceiving them. Excessive theorizing leads Frenhofer to the opposite pitfall, a constant process of retouching, an obsessive desire for an impossible perfection. Yet despite his tragic slowness in production Frenhofer may have been the pioneer of abtstract art — whose still greater tragedy lay in his own destruction of his work.

This thesis analyses twelfth- and thirteenth-century French texts from a range of genres to demonstrate how the inter-relation of narrative and place is a catalyst for the production of vernacular literary works. Rooted in close criticism of the texts in question (the Roman d’Eneas, lives of the martyrs Christina of Tyre and Catherine of Alexandria, the Voyage de saint Brendan, lives of the ascetics Alexis and Mary of Egypt, and the Roman de Brut), this study examines the ways in which narration both generates and delimits place. In tandem with this it interrogates the representations of, and disturbances to, the spatial organization of these texts, encompassing such themes as empire-building, genealogy, travel and exile. This juxtaposition of diverse materials opens up mutually illuminating spaces, demonstrating the instability of the entrenched generic categories applied to them and prompting consideration of the ambiguous principles of medieval poetic craft. Hagiography is a particularly pertinent crossing-point for multiple thematic concerns, from the tension between revelation and concealment of the body to the relationship between a state and its citizens. Its location at the confluence of liturgy, lay spirituality and entertainment makes it an apt focus for a study such as this. The thesis also considers questions of cultural and political appropriation and re-appropriation of place, drawing on medieval writers’ and thinkers’ conflicted relationship with their classical antecedents and non-Christian ‘others’. The many and varied journeys undertaken in these texts, meanwhile, offer critical meeting points between practices of writing about place across a range of modes, and they invite consideration of the historical contexts for their production. Foremost in this study, however, is a concern with the ways in which medieval narratives reify story; through close attention to how narratives are produced, preserved and transmitted in these texts, I examine the ethics and efficacy of storytelling as a means for creating place. Whether they re-present foundation myths, the trials of saints, or the fantastical journeys of adventurers, these stories are both container and content for reflections on how authors can relate to their world, and it this sense of the two faces of narrative that underpins my interpretation of these texts and their representations of places and spaces.

Within the range of literary reviews in Twentieth-Century France, none has a more highly-esteemed reputation than la Nouvelle Revue Francaise, originally founded in 1909 by Andre Gide and his friends. Resuming in 1919 in a world profoundly shaken by the upheaval and consequences of the First World War, the NRF, at first under Jacques Riviere and then, from 1925 (for the rest of the Inter-War period), under the editorial control of Jean Paulhan, re-established itself at the forefront of literary and critical creativity. Informed by much of the unpublished correspondence of Paulhan, this thesis shows that the NRF was not exclusively literary. An examination of Paulhan's role, and of his editorial policy (Chapter One) precedes the identification of a number of themes. Already sensitive to topical questions, the NRF debated the role and responsibilities of the intellectuals (Chapter Two), whose attitudes tended to become more politicized as they grew more aware of the deficiencies of the Third Republic (Chapter Three). Their preoccupations reflected major themes, in particular Franco-German relations (Chapter Four), Franco-Soviet relations (Chapter Five), and the Jewish question (Chapter Six). Of course the writers involved with the NRF continued to consider political and international issues in the light of their own preferences and prejudices.; yet their reactions and interpretations show that they were ever-more conscious of the crucial, historical importance of the period. Indeed its nature was such that History forced the NRF, eventually, into adopting a partisan position which was Antifascist, anti-Munich, and which even prefigured the Resistance (Chapter Seven).

There is a pervasive tendency, in Machaut scholarship, to read his poetry as having value only insofar as it speaks to our postmodern age: either it is fragmented and riven with ambiguities, or it celebrates eroticism and the things of this world for their own sake; in any case, it resists religious and moral orthodoxy. Such readings, while often valuable in themselves, fail to take sufficient account of the influence which Boethian and Neoplatonic ideas had upon Machaut, and thus misunderstand his work on a fundamental level. By paying attention to the Boethian content in the narrative dits, and by analysing Machaut's verse more thoroughly than has been done before, my thesis demonstrates not only this author's moral orthodoxy, but also his extremely sophisticated didactic methods. I begin with the Confort d'ami, Machaut's most overtly moral work. The Confort engages with the supposed 'worldly' perspective of its imprisoned addressee, adapting biblical and classical exempla in order to coax Charles of Navarre towards a deeper understanding of worldly fortune. In Chapter 2 I show how, in the Prologue and the Dit du vergier, the ambiguity so beloved of critics can serve as a moral commentary on the carnality and self-absorption of the erotic and artistic points of view. Having established, in the preceding chapters, that this author's approach to his subject is ambiguous and critical, in Chapter 3 I explore the extremes of his pessimism, and show how his love poetry can incorporate sophisticated philosophical ideas, through my analysis of the Jugement du roy de Behaigne. The thesis culminates in a detailed reading of the Remede de Fortune. Through his deliberately idealised statements about education, through his application of these views to the art of courtly love, through his composition (and setting to music) of a sequence of virtuoso lyrics, and through his explicit invocations of and borrowings from Boethius, Machaut develops an empathic but ultimately, as I argue, deeply sceptical vision of earthly love.

In this thesis I will trace the shifting representations of post-Independence Cameroon through a detailed analysis of the literary texts of two of its most celebrated writers (Mongo Beti and Calixthe Beyala), and the cinematic production of two of its most innovative filmmakers (Jean-Marie Téno and Pierre Békolo).  Theoretically, this study will be informed by both European and African post-colonial criticism, as well as other recent works of feminism, philosophy, and political theory, and will thereby critically engage with both Western and Afrocentric approaches to Sub-Saharan Africa’s literary and cinematic self-representation. The Cameroonian writers and filmmakers that will be the focus of this project provide an opportunity for a kind of critical dialogue between Western and African post-colonial interpretations of Sub-Saharan African cultural texts.  Starting with the theories of Franz Fanon and Albert Memmi on de-colonisation and the preservation of an authentic African identity, I will look at the question of Cameroon’s cultural and national identity, which is often portrayed as Francophone and yet authentically African, as a useful example of the complex nature of post-colonial Sub-Saharan Africa’s self-perception.  Beti’s works (1953-2000) and their representation of a ‘lost’ Cameroonian nation that must be rediscovered fully display this complexity. The novels of Calixthe Beyala stand in stark contrast to the male-centred representation of Cameroon to be found in Beti’s work.  Her celebration of marginal and dispossessed figures directly addresses the marginalising and exclusionary forces at work in most literary representations of Sub-Saharan Africa.  In this section I will use the key post-colonial concepts of marginality, hybridity, and positionality that have been popularised by Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak to assess the extent to which women writers like Beyala have become crucially important to Sub-Saharan Africa’s self conception. Cinema has likewise become increasingly important in Cameroon as a medium of cultural self-representation.  Cameroonian filmmakers have begun to exploit cinema’s power as an effective tool for mass political activism and change.  This has brought about such critically acclaimed films as Téno’s <i>Retours au pays natal </i>(2000), and Békolo’s <i>Le Complot d’Aristote</i> (1996).  In my thesis I will show how these filmmakers respond to the socio-political challenges of Cameroon, and thereby construct a fertile space for dialogical exchange between all producers of cultural texts.  The close analysis of their films will demonstrate the ways in which cinema is inherently bound up with other critical discourses on post colonialism in Africa, and the way in which it is intimately linked to literary concerns in the current period.

The detailed history of Rousseau's reputation in France in the nineteenth century is gradually being written. The general outline provided by Albert Schinz(1) and Raymond Trousson(2) is being filled in. F.G. Healey opened the way with his Rousseau et Napoleon in 1957(3). Jean Roussel has followed in 1972 with his Rousseau en France apres la Revolution, 1795-1830. (4) The aim of this thesis is to provide a further contribution to the history of "Rousseauism". In our Introduction, we draw on secondary sources to give an outline of Rousseau's reputation in France prior to 1848. We then proceed to examine in detail the attitudes of six writers of 1848 regarding Rousseau. This constitutes the body of our thesis.1848 marks a watershed. Soon after Louis Philippe's accession to the throne in 1830, the inactivity and corruption of his regime began to provoke general dissatisfaction among the population at large. The question of social justice was discussed everywhere in France. Writers were to be found who not only drew attention to the social evils of the time but who put forward suggestions for reform; some even argued in favour of a return to the Republic. Prominent among such (1) Cf. Etat, present des travaux sur J.-J. Rousseau, Paris,Societe Les Belles Lettres and New York, Modem Language Association of America, 1941.(2) Cf. Rousseau et sa fortune litteraire, Bordeaux, Ducros, 1971. (3) Geneve, Librairie Droz et Paris, Librairie Minard. (4) Paris, Librairie Armand Colin. Writers were Alphonse de Lamartine, Pierre Leroux, Jules Michelet, George Sand, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Louis Blanc. These were the "men of 1848". Indeed, when the Revolution broke out in February, 1848, Lamartine, who was made Minister of Foreign Affairs, virtually headed the Provisional Government while aiding the eighty-one year- old President, Dupont de l'Eure; and Blanc became President of the Luxembourg Commission after having first served as one of the three Secretaries to the Government. We have chosen to study these six figures because they reflect the spirit of change which characterizes 1848 and because for all of them Rousseau had great significance. This, in spite of the fact that, as R. Trousson has indicated (1), the period of the 1848 Revolution, unlike the period of the 1789 Revolution, is generally unfavourable to Rousseau: on the right, Lamartine's intense anti-Rousseauism is matched by Proudhon's on the left; Leroux, Michelet, G. Sand and Blanc stand out as declared disciples; yet, as will be seen for the first time in our detailed study, they too in many respects belong to their age in their fundamental misunderstanding of Rousseau's philosophical and political ideas.

In the 1950's and the 1960's in France there was a movement to bring theatre and culture to working class people. Roger Planchon started his work as a part of this movement. He founded his troupe in Lyons in the early fifties, distinguishing himself not only by the vitality and originality of his productions, but also by his insistence on creating a permanent fixed provincial theatre. In 1957, his company took over the municipal theatre of Villeurbanne, a working class suburb of Lyons. They made every effort to acquaint the local population with their theatre by creating contacts with various associations. Gradually they built up a considerable following. Planchon's work was from the first strongly Brechtian in orientation. He brought out the historical significance of both classical and modern plays, presenting them from a Marxist stand point. Eventually his work earned him widespread recognition as a leading contemporary director. In 1962 he wrote his first play, La Remise, a portrait of his peasant ancestors in the Ardeche. Planchon has tended over the years to write plays and to put on productions which are less and less interpretative, which ask questions but provide no answers. After the events of May 1968, Planchon and many other directors of theatres populaires admitted that only a minute fraction of their new public was made up of working class people; their methods had failed. In 1972 the government made Planchon's theatre in Villeurbanne the new Theatres National Populaire, and appointed him and his young colleague Patrice Chereau as the artistic directors. Planchon's TNP has made a policy of touring French cities. Using the contacts already established by each local theatre group, it had touched a vast and truly national audience. It is very doubtful, however, that it will ever reach a really popular public.